


is that a thing?

by notorious



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, god awfully angsty teens who probably shouldn't be together, it's a little soft tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:27:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28082418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notorious/pseuds/notorious
Summary: jeremy, vicki, some drugs, a cemetery.
Relationships: Vicki Donovan/Jeremy Gilbert
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	is that a thing?

**Author's Note:**

> this shit goes out to episode three of the afterbite podcast, "the vicki donovan struggle bus express." cheers to heterosexuality!!! i ripped off is that a thing? by carlie hanson. i don't know how to edit. pls enjoy. or don't. or go read something else i wrote. godspeed.

“ _ Is that a thing? _ ”

Jeremy Gilbert narrows his eyes at the darkening sky and pretends, just for a moment, that nothing has changed. That whenever he turns up home his parents will be there with arms open and love written in their eyes. Elena won't be worried about him. Jenna will be back on campus because if Miranda and Grayson are there she doesn't need to be. He pretends the house won't feel so empty, the fridge won't be so bare, the family photos in the living room won't make him want to put his fist through a wall.

“Is what a thing?” he asks, because he didn't hear the whole question, and ‘cause pretending can only sate him for so long (moments now, when it used to do the trick for days).

“You know,” Vicki Donovan says.

He doesn’t know.

He forces his eyes away from the sky and looks at her, really looks at her. It’s just light enough to tell that her pupils are blown. It’s just dark enough for her eyes to look brown; when it isn’t, sometimes, they look a little green; when the sun hits them around noon, when she tilts her head the right way, he’d call them hazel. They change with the seasons, Jeremy thinks, quite like his mood.

“Don’t make me explain it,” she says, shoving his shoulder.

They’re sprawled out in the trees, somewhere off the beaten path of the old cemetery the adults don’t like them hanging out after dark in. They’ve broken worse rules. A thin flannel picnic blanket keeps the dirt from their backs, Jeremy’s backpack keeps his head propped up. He’s got an arm outstretched, he’s got Vicki tucked under it, one of her hands tossed back casually to meet his like she wants to hold the hand dangling over her shoulder but doesn’t want to look like she’s thought too much about it.

“Throw the words out,” he says, “and I’ll see if I can put them together.”

Vicki sighs, a heavy one. Jeremy feels her shoulders slump as he watches her mouth open, close, and open again, only for her to force out a harsh breath. She doesn’t like the idea of elaborating, he knows, but he knows, too, that she wants to be heard. Wants someone, anyone, hopefully him, to hear her. To  _ understand _ her. To have answers that don’t make her want to cut and run and never look back. 

She’s gotten vulnerable with him before, or close to it, closer than Jeremy thinks she’s gotten with anyone in a long time. He takes that as an honor.

“I don’t know,” Vicki says. “I feel like everyone is always staring at me.”

“You’ve never considered that a problem before.”

“Shut up,” she says, and shoves him again. This time she leaves her hand on his chest, her thumb brushing up and down along the zipper of his sweatshirt. She’s trying not to smile.

They’re quiet for a minute. Jeremy doesn’t need to say anything yet. Vicki will talk when she wants to, he knows, when she’s ready. 

It’s enough in the meantime to bask in the bumps of hydrocodone buzzing through his system. 

His limbs are heavy, his heart beat’s steady, when he blinks it’s slow, and when he looks at her out of the corner of his eye he knows there’s no one he’d rather be stretched out on a blanket in an old cemetery with. There’s no one he’d rather use with, too, but that thought comes last because it’s easier for Jeremy to think this is all perfectly real when he doesn’t think about the drugs. 

It doesn’t matter whether he  _ likes _ the drugs or not (he does, most of the time), but it matters to him whether Vicki’s happy or not, and she’s usually happiest when she’s high. It doesn’t occur to him that when he uses, most of the time, it’s because Vicki wants him to. She’s unhappiest when she’s high alone.

“They have all these people,” Vicki says, taking a fistful of Jeremy’s sweatshirt to hold on to. “The D.A.R.E. officers, the whoevers. All these people come to talk to us at school about  _ this _ is bad,  _ that’s _ bad,  _ don’t do drugs _ , don’t ruin your life, don’t end up a nobody. Don’t end up some small-town loser, some good-for-nothing  _ whatever _ . Those people say go down this path and you’ll never be anything. You know?”

“Well, sure,” Jeremy says. “But you don’t need to listen to them if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t know,” Vicki says again.

The temperature’s dropping. Not quickly, no, but there’s a gentle wind now, and it’s a little chilly, and even though she’s more than all right Vicki uses it as an excuse to tuck in closer to Jeremy. Her chest pressed against his side. His arm tight around her shoulders when she grabs for his hand and tugs on it. Her cheek pressed against his chest. The smell of his cheap cologne soothing her one breath at a time.

“I’m so tired of it,” she says.

“Of listening to them?”

“Of being tired.”

Jeremy can’t pretend the world doesn’t exist beyond the two of them. Instead he thinks of the world in pockets. Mystic Falls is a pocket, the cemetery is a pocket, the blanket he and Vicki are stretched out on is a pocket. His arms, with Vicki wrapped up in them, are a pocket. For a time, if only a little while, he thinks they can exist solely within that pocket. He just wants to hear her talk. It’s unusual to get this much substance and honesty out of her when they’re high, but he likes it, and he wants to hold onto it. Whatever words come out of her mouth, Jeremy swears, he won’t take them out of this pocket of the world. Whatever she tells him will stay right here. Right in his heart; that’s the pocket he’s set aside for Vicki Donovan.

“Keep talking,” he says, and it sounds like a question.

His eyes are closed. He doesn’t need to look at the sky and pretend right now. He feels the steady rise and fall of Vicki’s breath, he feels the wind brushing through his hair and over his cheeks, feels the world beginning to shut down for the evening.

But Vicki doesn’t. Not until Jeremy gives up counting the minutes sometime after he gets to three. He’s lucky she doesn’t mind existing in silence with him. He’s lucky she wants to spend time with him in the first place.

“Will I—oh God, this is so stupid,” Vicki says, laughing to drown out her embarrassment, but nothing’s funny. A pause. “Do you think I’ll ever be able to see my face in the mirror and not want it to—I don’t know—erase? Does that even make sense?”

It would make more sense if he were sober. He doesn’t remember the last time he was around Vicki like that.

“Yeah,” he says gently, “I think it makes sense.”

Vicki sits up. Tosses her hair over her shoulder, looks down at him like he’s the calm at the end of the storm. Like it’s him and not gravity that holds her to the face of the earth. “Like—and I can’t believe it’s  _ me _ saying this—but do you think I’ll ever be okay without something in my veins?” She’s fidgeting. “People do that, right? That’s a thing?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy says again, smiling, “that’s a thing.”

“Do you think I could do that?”

She looks scared, he realizes. Wide eyes, lips twitching, hands no longer able to stay still in her lap. He sits up to meet her. Eye-to-eye it’s easier to understand the hold she has over him; she is  _ beautiful _ , and he is pliable.

“Do  _ you _ think you could do that?”

“I don’t know,” she says, reaching for his sweatshirt again. “Maybe one day we could do it together.”

When she pulls him in until their lips meet he has absolutely no idea that Vicki Donovan is not only beautiful, she is tragic.

It’s only then that he realizes even with all Vicki’s said to him he hasn’t put anything together at all.

**Author's Note:**

> if u made it this far ... thank u for your time


End file.
